Argentina national team striker Lionel Messi commented on his rise to the top of the list of top scorers in the history of the world championships.

In the match of the first round of the 2026 Emergency against Algeria, the 38-year-old forward scored a hat-trick, thus increasing the number of his goals at the world championships to 16. For this performance, we became rivals with the legendary German striker Miroslav Klose.

However, the Argentinean himself stated that he does not attach great importance to this achievement, but wants to honor the honor of being ranked among the most prominent football players in the history of the tournament.

" It is a great honor for me to be on this list, which means that I am entrusted to Klose. There’s also Ronaldo, but I don’t think what that means,” Messi said.

The forward also recognized other prominent goalscorers of light feathers, saying that statistical indicators are not for anyone the main criterion for assessing the greatness of football players.

" All statistics and nothing more. Although it is a great honor for me to be able to get away with all of them, it really doesn’t mean anything to me,” said the Argentine captain.

Around Messi, he discovered the burial of the legendary Brazilian Ronaldo.

" That’s why it’s just statistics,” summed up the eight-time winner of the Golden Ball.

The match with Algeria became special for the Argentinean not only because of its record-breaking achievement. Zustrich was 200th at the warehouse of the national team and 27th at world championships.

Next up for Argentina are the group stage matches against Austria and Jordan.